worsdt mistake in poker

[naphand]

Exactly, safely folding aghainst the right opponents will induce more River bluffs from others.

Of course you must have reliable reads and NO you won't garner all the required information from PT.

[colgin]

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it most certainly is the worst mistake (i specifically said magnitude) though just as certainly not the most common. Folding a winner on the end is real bad, folding a winner on the end after aggressively putting money in on the river is the worst single mistake you can make.

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Folding a winner to a river raise is a HUGE mistake only if you have grossly misestimated how often your hand is good given the board, your opponent's hand range and his bluffing frequency, etc. For example, if you fold to the river raise getting 8:1 because you correctly evaluate that your hand isn't good even 10% of the time then your fold is a good one. (And that is regardless of results; if your evaluation was correct but your opponent were to show you his worse hand (one of the few wrose hands you thought he could have had) after you folded then your fold would still have been good.)

However, if your assumptions and judgments are way off and your hand is good 30+% of the time then you have made a sizable mistake by folding. I think it is fine when in doubt to lean towards calling; but don't assume that your fold, if it is a mistake at all, is necessarily huge one. It may, in fact, be very close EV-wise one way or the other.

[sthief09]

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Thinking players that adjust at the table are rare, so I don't think its a huge leak until you hit the high levels.

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i would think calling to not be too exploitable is mainly an excuse for being curious and hating to get bluffed/fold a winner

[wheelz]

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calling to not be too exploitable is mainly an excuse for being curious and hating to get bluffed/fold a winner

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[Monty Cantsin]

Yeah, I tend to be suspicious of any strategy that just happens to coincide very nicely with my psychological desires.

/mc

[Jdanz]

i really should have made it more clear that i understand it's not a mistake if you call and are wrong, or fold when you would have won, supposing your EV calc was correct, and your decision correct, but unlucky.

What i'm saying is, if you folding here, makes your opponents bluff more, therefore making you make more mistakes later in the session, then it is possible that you should be calling more often.

I know many will say if they start bluffing more they're throwing away money, but in reality it is very diffiuclt to get a quick bead on how one decision effects their bluffing frequency. All things considered i'd generally prefer to be bluff raised less as it makes the river very difficult to play, and makes it even harder for me to fold marginal hands and i usually end up mpaying off too many value raises afterwards.

If i'm against an opponent that clearly bluffs too much on the river, i'm all for making him bluff more, but vs your average opponent an increase in river bluff raising is going to put me in a pretty difficult position.

[LearnedfromTV]

Someone else pointed this out, but it's worth emphasizing. The problem with calling to prevent future bluffs is that you have to fold later to take advantage of the fact that you've discouraged bluffs, which, if you do it too often, will encourage bluffs.

This is a game theory problem; both never folding to a river raise and always folding to a river raise are easily exploitable. The goal has to be to fold with a frequency that isn't exploitable, given the frequency of your opponents river raises and the ranges of hands you and he hold in those situations.

[naphand]

Jolly good.

I just wish I had been the one who said it... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[StellarWind]

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This is a game theory problem; both never folding to a river raise and always folding to a river raise are easily exploitable.

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True. But note that excessive folding is much more exploitable than excessive calling because the latter always have negative EV of less than a bet and your opponent is required to have the better hand despite your value bet. Excessive folding can become a multi-BB per instance leak that also occurs much more often.

Game theory says you better not fold very often in big pots because otherwise Villain will have the pot odds to bluff either time he has a weak hand. The exact computation of odds is complicated because there are two kinds of bluffing hands:

1. Worthless hands that risk 2 BB to win the pot.

2. Bluff catchers that have or nearly have pot odds to call in case the bettor is bluffing. These hands can be raised at an additional risk of 1 BB to try and fold out made hands.

Reliable reads on river bluffing are hard to get in online play. You need to watch a very large number of hands to establish that a player is not bluffing with correct frequency and with multitabling and constant player turnover that is rarely possible. My practical approach is to consider the range of my hands that are consistent with my previous play. Unless my actual hand is near the bottom of that range I payoff. For example, if my range is set (5%), two pair (10%), TPGK (40%), second pair (20%), MPGK (15%), bluffing (10%), then there is no way I should be folding top pair in a medium-sized pot against an unknown opponent. That would mean I'm folding over half my hands and that is ridiculous from a game theory perspective.